QFFU x MUBI: Shakedown

Shakedown is the story of Los Angeles’ black lesbian strip club scene and its genesis. Owned and operated by women, underground and illegal in nature, the club Shakedown is the darker, faster, younger iteration of this dance culture. The film is a window into this world. Shakedown emerged from a post-RIOTS, post-OJ, post-integration but still very racially divided Los Angeles. In this divided city Shakedown is an independent, all black and all female cash economy. A film that unfolds like a legend. 

About the film, the director Leilah Weinraub said: “I see the characters in the movie as stars more than subjects. Documentary filmmakers feel really nervous about using the word stars, but I feel like there’s this position in between journalistic integrity and this other thing. There’s music, it’s a movie, there’s an original score made for it… at that point you depart from journalism. You are making people actors in a story.”